Text3
In both developed and developing nations, governments finance, produce, and distribute various goods and services. In recent years, the range of goods provided by the government has extended broadly, including many goods that do not meet the economic purists definition of “public goods”. As the size of the public sector has increased steadily, there has been a growing concern about the effectiveness of the public sectors performance as producer.
Critics argue that the public provision of certain goods is inefficient and have proposed that the private sector should replace many current public sector activities, that is, these services should be privatized. Since 1980s, greater privatization efforts have been pursued in the United States.
Concurrent with this trend has been a strong endorsement(support) by international bilateral donor(aid) agencies for heavier reliance on the private sector in developing countries. The underlying claim is that the private sector can improve the quality of outputs and deliver goods more quickly and less expensively than the public sector in these countries.
This claim, however, has mixed theoretical support and little empirical verification in the Third World. The political, institutional, and economic environments of developing nations are markedly different from those of developed countries. It is not clear that the theories and empirical evidence that claim to justify privatization in developed countries are applicable to developing nations. Often policy makers in developing nations do not have sufficient information to design effective policy shifts to increase efficiency of providing goods through private initiatives. Additionally, there is a lack of basic understanding about what policy variables need to be altered to attain desired outcomes of privatization in developing countries.
One study of privatization in Honduras examined the policy shift from “direct administration” to “contracting out” for three construction activities: urban upgrading for housing projects, rural primary schools, and rural roads. It tested key hypotheses applying to the effectiveness of privatization, focusing on three aspects: cost, time, and quality.
The main finding was that contracting out in Honduras did not lead to the common expectations of its proponents because institutional barriers and limited competitiveness in the marketplace have prevented private contractors from improving quality and reducing the time and cost required for construction.
Privatization in developing countries cannot produce goods and services efficiently without substantial reform in the market and regulatory procedures. Policy makers interested in privatization as a policy measure should consider carefully the multiple objectives at the national level.31. It can be inferred from the text that economic purists
\[A\] oppose shifting goods from public to private.
\[B\] support the substantial reform of privatization.
\[C\] approve privatization only in developed nations.
\[D\] have a strict description of public merchandise.
32. Since 1980s, there has been
\[A\] broad international support for privatization.
\[B\] much evidence for privatization in poor nations.
\[C\] endorsement for privatization of donor agencies.
\[D\] maximum dependence on private capital in the U.S..
33. The authorities of developing nations seem incapable of
\[A\] attaining political stability.
\[B\] making major policy shifts.
\[C\] upgrading basic urban economy.
\[D\] enhancing production efficiency.
34. The authors appraisal of Honduras study implies that in developing countries
\[A\] direct administration of services requires more capital.
\[B\] their marketplace system leaves much to be desired.
\[C\] privatization is politically unfit for their economies.
\[D\] new facilities rather than contracting out are needed.
35. The authors primary intention is to
\[A\] outline major hindrance to privatization in developing nations.
\[B\] offer a solution for the future course of economic policy shifts.
\[C\] justify heavier reliance on the private sector in the Third World.
\[D\] explain requirements for privatization of the Third World economies.
Text4
Many critics of the current welfare system argue that existing welfare regulations foster family instability. They maintain that those regulations which exclude most poor husbandandwife families from Aid to Families with Dependent Children(AFDC) assistance grants, contribute to the problem of family dissolution. Thus, they conclude that expanding the set of families eligible for family assistance plans or guaranteed income measures would result in a marked strengthening of the lowincome family structure.
If all poor families could receive welfare, would the incidence of instability change markedly? The answer to this question depends on the relative importance of three categories of potential welfare recipients. The first is the “cheater”—the husband who is reported to have abandoned his family but in fact disappears only when the social caseworker is in the neighborhood. The second consists of a loving husband and devoted father leaves so that his wife and children may enjoy the relative benefit provided by public assistance. There is very little evidence that these categories are significant.
The third category is the unhappily married couple, who remain together out of a sense of economic responsibility for their children, because of the high costs of separation, or because of the consumption benefit of marriage. This group is large. The formation, maintenance, and dissolution of the family is in large part a function of the relative balance between the benefits and costs of marriage as seen by the individual members of the marriage. The major benefit generated by the creation of a family is the expansion of the set of consumption possibilities. The benefits from such a partnership depend largely on the relative dissimilarity of the resources or basic endowments each partner brings to the marriage. Persons with similar productive capacities have less economic “cement” holding their marriage together. Since the family performs certain functions society regards as vital, a complex network of social and legal buttresses has evolved to reinforce marriage. Much of the variation in marital stability across income classes can be explained by the variation in costs of dissolution imposed by society.
Marital stability is related to the costs of achieving an acceptable agreement on family consumption and production and to the prevailing social price of instability in the marriage partners socialeconomic group. Expected AFDC income exerts pressures on family instability by reducing the cost of dissolution. So welfare opportunities are a significant determinant of family instability in poor neighborhoods, but this is not the result of AFDC regulations that exclude most intact families from coverage. Rather, welfarerelated instability occurs because public assistance lowers both the benefits of marriage and the costs of its disruption by providing a system of governmentsubsidized alimony(maintenance) payments.36. The text is written with the aim of
\[A\] analyzing the causes of a phenomenon.
\[B\] discussing the fathers role in the family.
\[C\] advocating reforms in the welfare system.
\[D\] criticizing some attitudes to welfare recipients.
37. Many critics assert it as true that the welfare system is
\[A\] liable for most divorces.\[B\] on the verge of collapse.
\[C\] to become obsolete.\[D\] unjust to the needy.
38. According to the author, the marital stability relies mainly on
\[A\] the steady income of the couple.
\[B\] the balance of both sides property.
\[C\] the difference in spousal contributions.
\[D\] the benefits from government subsidies.
39. All of the following are factors tending to perpetuate a marriage EXCEPT
\[A\] the expenditure of child support.
\[B\] the loss of property upon divorce.
\[C\] the greater consumption of married people.
\[D\] the welfare provision for divorced women.
40. Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of the text?
\[A\] Welfare restrictions mostly account for family unsteadiness.
\[B\] Poor family dissolution is little attributed to helpless fathers.
\[C\] Official welfare payments can slow the growing divorce rate.
\[D\] Lowincome family disruption results in poor welfare benefits.
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